


I Remind Myself (Of Somebody Else)

by Nevcolleil



Category: Chuck (TV), White Collar
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 12:52:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15315909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: Jones says it for all of them: "What the hell does a 'sales associate’ fromCaliforniahave to do with Ivan Stravisnko?""Maybe the BuyMore's looking for a cheaper source of inventory."California is one of those places Neal won't go. He can't explain it... but just talking about Burbank with Morgan Grimes's face up on the flat screen is giving him a headache."Ivan was smuggling people, Caffrey. Not bootlegged DVDs."(Or: There are things Neal Caffrey knows without knowing how he knows. And one of the things he knows is that he can't let anything bad happen to the strange little man who's ended up in FBI custody.)





	I Remind Myself (Of Somebody Else)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know when I'll return to this, but I had to get it off my hard-drive and let it breathe a bit because I _want_ to return to it.

It's happened before.

There are places that Neal won't go, simply because they don't feel right; people he avoids for no reason at all. Some would call it instinct, or paranoia - but Neal's ignored it often enough to know better - and this goes so much farther than a “gut” feeling.

This isn't just about what Neal can sense. It's about what he _knows_.

Neal knows how to disassemble, and reassemble, any handgun faster than he can name its parts, nevermind that he has no recollection of learning more than the one. He knows that if he sits near someone who's speaking an unfamiliar language - and he lets his mind wander - he can make out most of what's being said. It doesn't matter that he's never studied the language; it's only when he consciously tries to translate foreign words that they make no sense to him.

They chase Ivan - their smuggler - into a warehouse and walk in moments after, but Ivan's already dead. A man in black stands over his still-warm body, holding a smoking pistol. 

"FBI! Drop your weapon!" Peter shouts, at the head of the team. Neal doesn't know _why_ he can't let anyone take a shot at their shooter - but he knows that he can't.

He steps smoothly between the man, as the pistol in the man's hand rises, and the half-dozen federal-issue sidearms that rise in response to him.

"Neal, _no_!" Peter barks. In the distance, Neal can hear Jones echoing his concern, but he can only stare at the gun aimed now directly at his heart.

"Put down your weapon, _now_!" someone else shouts. The bearded man doesn't. He honestly looks too startled to move. He blinks at Neal like he can't imagine how Neal got here, and Neal thinks, 'You and me both, buddy,' helplessly.

The man's jaw _drops_ \- literally. It would be comical if Neal weren't fully expecting to die at any moment.

"Bry- _what_?" the man stutters. He hisses, as if for Neal's ears only, "What are you doing here?"

"Caffrey! Move out of the way," Peter huffs. Neal wouldn't know what to say to either of them if he had the breath to say it.

But the little man doesn't wait. His arms snap up like they've been jerked by a pulley, and the pistol snaps up with them.

"It's down! It's down!" he yells. "Well... technically, it's _up_! It's not even mine! Here! Take it!" He practically shoves his gun at the first agent to reach him as the team closes ranks.

Neal releases the breath that had frozen in his lungs.

"Neal! What the hell was _that_?" Peter demands, as soon as his agents have cuffed and led their shooter, screaming his innocence, away. His voice is rough in the aftermath of panic, but Neal can't hear it.

"Peter?"

Neal knows one other thing. 

"I don't feel so-"

Peter's face slackens in surprise. He calls for a paramedic as Neal's world goes black.

 

\--

 

"Our mystery man's name is Morgan Grimes," Diana announces to the room at large, the next day, but Neal can feel everyone's eyes on him. He has to resist the urge to tell them all to focus on the front of the class. 

He's been saying it since it happened: 'No, I don't know why I passed out. Yes, I'm fine' and 'No, I don't know who our shooter is.' But it's not like Neal's never had a gun pointed at him before, and he's not prone to swooning into Peter's arms. Nobody will listen to him.

"Any priors?" asks Jones.

"Just some pot charges from '04," Diana says, lips twisting in equal parts amusement and bemusement. She's been making similar faces since calling them all in here, and when she pulls up some photos of Grimes on the flatscreen, Neal can finally see why.

One image is a mugshot; in it, Grimes is noticeably younger. His dark hair is much longer and unkempt; his expression is bored, almost vacant. The others seems to be a professional headshot for a department store; there are shelves of electronics visible behind him, and he's wearing a vest, tie and name badge. His hair is cut to its current length and his beard is neatly trimmed. His smile fills the flat screen. 

"He was arrested for possession of marijuana in Burbank, California, where he's lived for most of his life." Diana's tone is appropriately ironic. This case stared with allegations of human trafficking out of Russia. Now they're discussing misdemeanors on the west coast? "Then he cleaned up his act," Diana deadpans. "Longest prior work experience is with the BuyMore electronics store. From 2010 until 2012 he was the manager at the Burbank location, where he’d worked off and on as a sales associate for about six years before that."

"Family?" Peter looks up from the file he's been reading to ask.

"Married, no kids. He's got a mother and a step-dad back in Cali, but that's it," Diana tells him.

Jones says it for all of them: "What the hell does a 'sales associate’ from _California_ have to do with Ivan Stravisnko?"

Neal speaks up at last. Mostly to see if talking will relieve some of the pressure that's building back up in his head. "Maybe the BuyMore's looking for a cheaper source of inventory." 

California is one of those places Neal won't go. He can't explain it, but just talking about Burbank with Grimes's face up on the flat screen is giving him a headache.

Neal hides his distress in a convincing smirk when Jones raises a brow in his direction, but unfortunately his headache is only beginning. Because just after Diana reminds, "Ivan was smuggling people, Caffrey. Not bootlegged DVDs,” she adds, “And Grimes doesn't work for the BuyMore anymore. He quit in 2012.”

“To do what?” asks Jones.

Bemused doesn’t even begin to describe Diana’s expression as she shakes her head. “Well, now that’s where this gets interesting.”

Diana clicks her remote and the two images of Grimes on the flatscreen are replaced by one. It’s another professional headshot - this one obviously newer as Grimes is slightly older in it. He’s also wearing a nicely tailored suit and a much less effusive expression. He’s standing in front of a pane of frosted glass etched with a company logo and name.

Neal’s heart speeds up. He can’t even say why - but his breath shortens and his palms sweat. All he can do is stare at the words over Grimes’s shoulder and imagine that everyone must hear the rushing of blood that’s nearly deafening in his ears.

Except... nobody does. For the first time all morning, the room’s attention is solely on Diana and her presentation, and when whatever minor crisis Neal’s body is obviously anticipating does not occur, Neal settles and calms. His attention returns to her too.

He’s missed what she’s told the team about Grimes’s most recent employment, but it’s not like that’s not obvious.

When Neal tunes back in, Peter has just finished saying “- _electronics store_ to a private security firm?”

“You tell me, Boss,” Diana says, clearly having exhausted that same question in her own mind. “The company was founded in 2011 and W2s say Grimes went to work for them almost right away. In 2012 he left the BuyMore to work for the firm full time, and shortly after that he was promoted to a controlling partner. He essentially co-owns the company with its founder, a Charles Carmichael out of Los Angeles.”

Diana’s audience is all leaning forward in their seats, with varying levels of skepticism plain on their face - well, all except Neal, who is just now prying his fingers away from the armrests they’d wrapped themselves around. Jones breaks the shocked silence that has more or less settled over the team when he huffs and sits back in his seat.

“Okay, wait a minute,” he says. “Private security firms are usually full of ex-military, ex-law enforcement agents.” Jones taps his copy of Grimes’s file, spread out in front of him on the briefing table. “Grimes’s a civvie. Never joined a force. Never even been to _college_...”

Normally, this would be where Neal made some crack about the culinary arts academy Grimes apparently attended in 2008, but his mouth still feels too dry. His throat is tight. This has happened before - this feeling Neal has like he knows something he doesn’t actually _know_ , but never so often back to back. First there was the warehouse, where he knew he had to step in front of Grimes before he had any idea who Grimes was... Next, the way he’d felt the moment Burbank, California, had come up. Then there’s the way the world had spun for a moment when Neal saw _Carmichael Industries_ etched in glass-

“You’re telling me somebody not only hired this guy to work private security... They’re letting him help run it?” Jones is still saying.

“Makes more sense with where we found him than the electronics store,” Diana concedes, although she looks less than convinced herself. Even in his dark clothes and holding a pistol, Grimes hadn’t looked like the type to tangle with big Russian smugglers. Or even lean Federal CIs. 

“Yes, but this is the first time I’m hearing about Carmichael Industries,” Peter interjects. “NYPD sent over the transcript of Grimes’s initial interrogation last night. If he was here for work, he’s not saying.”

“What is he saying?” Neal asks now that he feels more confident of his voice.

The short pause before Peter answers, staring more directly at Neal than anyone else would dare, makes him wonder if he should have. It’s not like he hasn’t had plenty of experience with weathering his partner’s focused gaze - half their relationship seems to be built on meaningful eye contact and interpreting the output. That’s been quite obvious lately. But Peter looks away before he speaks again, without questioning Neal’s unusually subdued behavior, and Neal knows that Peter at least is still paying just as much attention to him as to their case.

“He says he was just out for a jog,” says Peter, in the tone Neal is used to hearing directed at himself - when he’s sold Peter one of his less than entirely convincing stories. “When he heard a gunshot, he ran to check it out.”

“Out for a jog... in the warehouse district,” Jones repeats dryly.

“Says he takes one every morning.” 

Diana nods when both men look to her to confirm the obvious implication.

“Grimes is local,” she says. “He left Burbank in 2013 and moved to New York.”

“All the way across the country. Carmichael Industries?” Peter asks.

“Relocated at the same time,” Diana confirms.

Carmichael Industries is in New York. Has been for almost two years now. The news should mean nothing to Neal - it _means_ nothing to him. He’s never heard the name before today. He’s had run-ins with a variety of “private security firms”, of course; he’s a thief who rarely stoops to stealing anything so petty its owner hasn’t hired private security to try and protect it. But Neal’s never run into _this_ private security firm. Yet his pulse is picking up again; his skin feels too hot. What the _hell_ is happening to him?

“I want to know everything about Carmichael Industries and everyone who works for it,” Peter is saying. Diana nods. “Jones, let’s look over what we’ve got on Stravisnko again. If they were after him, I wanna know why. And why Grimes is playing dumb.”

The Bureau itself has stumbled over private individuals and organizations hired to work the same case they’ve been working more than once. Namedropping whoever he’s working for wouldn’t clear Grimes of shooting Stravisnko, but ‘self-defense against a potential contract’ would make for a much better story than his ‘jogger in the wrong place at the wrong time’ alibi.

“Neal and I will head down to the NYPD and try to catch Grimes before they let him disappear,” Peter continues, snapping Neal back out of his thoughts.

And everyone else as well.

“Boss?” Diana asks.

“Forensics cleared Grimes of all charges an hour ago,” Peter says. “There was too little GPR on his clothes and hands, and no fingerprints whatsoever. Not on the shell casing we found or the safety on the gun-”

“They’re just letting him go?” Neal blurts out, balancing the perfectly rational displeasure of someone who’s recently had a gun pointed at him with an inexplicable relief.

“He lawyered up as soon as the NYPD finished questioning him,” Peter says. “Chief Palermo had the courtesy to warn us that they probably wouldn’t be able to hold him long once the lab results came in.”

“He must have one hell of a lawyer,” Jones speaks again for all of them.

“Someone does,” Peter agrees. He spares Neal another curious glance before sharing a more purposeful look with his fellow agents. “Let’s find out who.”


End file.
